It was not exactly a classic. Once again, the game was marred by multiple ugly fouls by Dutch players, which resulted in an early flurry of yellow cards. (Ironically, de Boer managed to both earn a yellow card and injure himself in an ugly foul on Ljunberg.) Although there were chances on both sides, the Swedes came closer to scoring during regular time and extra-time, with both Larsson and Ljunberg hitting the woodwork at a time where a single goal would have almost guaranteed victory.

Ruud van Nistelrooy was his typical irritating self, immediately trying to force fouls out of the opposition’s defense and going to ground like a bean bag in the penalty area. It was kind of ironic, thus, that Sweden’s Ibrahimovic was the one that was yellow-carded for a dive — although it was indeed a dive and deserved punishment. I don’t know how van Nistelrooy does it, but somehow he always manages to get away with it. He must have attended a drama school in an earlier life or something.

Anyway, the penalty kicks were typically unpredictable and meaningless. Holland is through, but Sweden has nothing to be ashamed of. Neither team is great — and really, at this point, the whole competition has lost much of its relevance, with all the top-seeded teams out and the Czechs being the only team that has consistently impressed so far. I guess we’ll be rooting for the Czech Republic and Portugal in the semi-finals, and the Czechs in the final! (I am assuming the Czechs are going to win tonight here…)

This entry was posted by Pierre Igot
on Saturday, June 26th, 2004 at 11:00 pm and is filed under Football.
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2 Responses to “Euro 2004: Quarter-Finals, Holland 0 – Sweden 0”

If you had known the history of the game this particular penalty session would have had some point of interest. Holland has a very bad record with penalty shootouts. They went down on penalties in 1992 (EC-SF), 1996 (EC-QF), 1998 (WC-SF), 2000 (EC-SF), with the latter one against Italy being exceptional as they also managed to miss two penalties during regular playing time.
Thinking that penalties are unpredictable is a strang way of thinking. Everything is trainable.

I am aware of Holland’s recent history with penalty kicks. That doesn’t make the thing more predictable!

I highly doubt that part of Holland’s training was to learn how to telepathically communicate with Ibrahimovic so that he would lose his concentration right before taking his penalty kick and sky it (or “beckham it” as the commentator said :-)).

As a spectator, with the camera filming a close-up of Ibrahimovic’s face, you could tell that he was going to screw up. He had this weird smile on instead of closing his face and focusing entirely on the kick, as most others did. (And Cocu should have thrown his gum away before taking his :).)

You can make them train all you want for penalty kicks, but you can never fully control the players’ minds.